In many endeavors, specific “cause and effect,” outcomes caused by identified antecedents, precursors and successors, “lines of reasoning,” or “sequences of information” give rise to the need to uniquely identify all contributors and results and how each is correlated with another in a primary, secondary or more distant relationship. In all cases, maintaining the integrity of the “lines” or “sequences” is paramount, and recording the relationships to indicate succinctly as much useful information as possible is always important and usually forms the basis of any systematic approach to record keeping.
When working with ancestral lineages, for example, both professional and non-professional genealogists most often deal with family “lines” and “generations.” However, there is no accepted ancestral numbering system that addresses this apparent need to reliably assign and clearly indicate both lineage and generational information.
The widely-used Ahnentafel method of sequentially numbering individuals in ancestral pedigrees does not directly indicate antecedent lines or generations. This also is the case for the Dollarhide and similar approaches derived from the Ahnentafel method. Until now, there has been no generally accepted mathematically-based alternative to Ahnentafel numbering. Therefore, an improved ancestral numbering system is needed that, at a minimum, provides for these two important indicators. Any such new system also must meet the more general requirements of maintaining integrity of the lines and generations and of recording relationships briefly with as much useful information as possible.
The present invention therefore is applicable for uniquely numbering each ancestral line, generation, partner and sibling in any genealogical record. However, the present invention of a numbering system for antecedents and outcomes is applicable for a number of different applications.
Uniform cohorts of multiple outcomes arise in many situations. A numbering system for outcomes is a direct, if inverse, application of the same formula used for the antecedent cases whenever every cohort of outcomes is uniformly comprised of the same or nearly the same number of multiples. In practice, as in the antecedent cases, a few of the outcomes provided for may be eliminated or “zeroed out” as non-events in any cohort. However, these must be numbered to preserve the order and utility of the numbered relationships.